Just wanted to report on my first attempt for international travel in 2+ years (since the pandemic and then since my asthma exacerbation). I've been on Xolair for the last 7 months, and gradually built the confidence to drive across the channel to attend a wedding. I had a FFP2 mask on while driving. Stayed in 2 different hotels, both with hardwood floors (easy to find in Belgium and Germany, unlike in the UK/USA). I still did not trust the hotel mattress/pillow (dust mites, pets who stayed in the room before etc), so I built a portable HEPA/charcoal filter that blows air into a 150mm hose and into a small tent. I set the tent on top of the hotel bed, and it worked quite well for sleeping. The filter also got rid of any odors (from hotel cleaning etc). The filter is on wheels and quite bulky, and the hotel management did not mind. The set up is shown on the picture. The cost to build this was about £1000 -- tent + HEPA box.
Interestingly, I felt much better outside in Germany than in the UK, despite the pollen. Not sure why -- trees, grass etc are not much different. Air pollution? No idea.
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Thanks Geogeor! Indeed, I did not see any rape fields at all. I drove from Calais to Koeln (Cologne) through Belgium via E40 and it was all fine, even next to highways. It was quite warm -- 20 during the night and 25+ during the day. Did not measure the humidity, by experience I am guessing it was around 50-60%.
Well, what can I say re: recommending this -- it beats staying in one place for years. It took some courage to commit to the trip, and I am happy I did it. The filter should be much smaller so that I can fly with it. I used to fly with an earlier prototype of this DIY HEPA filter, but its motor was small and quite noisy. Generally, the bigger the fan diameter, the slower the blower can run, and the quieter it is. Also, I used a round duct in-line filter this time, and those are usually not compact (long and and narrow).
The unit is quite heavy (~30 kilos), b.c. I used off-the-shelf standard parts (galvanized steel etc) and did not care about size and weight, as along as it fit in my car. The HEPA filter, the motor, and the carbon filter are together about 10 kilos, but the duct connectors, the frame, and nuts/bolts made it much heavier. I am currently making a lighter smaller prototype (aiming at <~15 kilos) to check as luggage to fly.
You can also look for "HEPA dust scrubbers" on amazon (people on asthma.net gave me a hint on this). These are quite portable . The issue with these, however, is that they are made of plastic (plastic can have odour), and use small powerful turbos which are very noisy (70 dB) -- it's like sleeping with a vacuum cleaner on. Not ideal for me. The key seems to use large-diameter (~200 mm) low-RPM backward-curved centrifugal fans. This is what IQair uses, and this is what I used for my non-portable machine. My machine is about 40 dB -- 30x less noisy than scrubbers, i.e. can sleep with it.
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